Page 101 of Master of Storms
But she drew back as if she realized she’d said too much.
“Solveig.” He caught her wrist. Why would she never simply give in? Why did everything between them have to end in a fight? “It’s always… what?”
Solveig glared at him. “Fighting me. It’s always fighting me.”
It wasn’t what he’d expected her to say.
Marduk drew back. To be attuned to yourdrekiwas to be one with yourself. Sometimes it overruled him—there’d been that moment in the throne room the other day when he’d nearly torn Draco’s head from his shoulders for daring to touch her—but he was mostly in control of himself. And while it sometimes overwhelmed him with its primal instincts, it was never a battle between them.
“How long has it been fighting you?”
Her lips pressed firmly together.
But it felt as though the skies suddenly opened.
It’s never quiet when you’re around….
Why do you hate me so much? You hated me from the first moment you saw me….
“That’swhy you hated me? You took one look at me and yourdrekidecided to hurt me?”
“Not you!” Frustration darkened her face. “Me. It was trying to…. I don’t know. It just…. It hurt. It feels like being ripped apart from the inside. There you were, and all of a sudden mydrekiwas screaming inside me, trying to batter its way out of my chest. Every time I saw you it felt like an explosion of pain and fury and need and—”
“Need?”
Color turned her cheeks a pretty rose color. “Of course, you would focus on that one word. Ofcourse. You were pretty, Marduk. I’m not going to lie. And this… animosity between us could always have gone one of two ways. To bed. Or to war. But I always knew that if we ended up in bed, you would destroy me—”
“Destroy you? I never intended anything of the sort. I’ve never once given you reason to think that I wanted to—”
“Oh,really?”
“Not then. Not when we first met. I was trying to be polite. You tried to murder me. And even when I sang that stupid poem, I had no intentions of hurting you. I was…. Fuck, I was young, and stupid, and you’dput a knife in mefor daring to try and kiss you.”
“If I’d meant to kill you, I wouldn’t have given you a mere flesh wound.”
“Flesh wound?”
“None of it made sense,” she snapped back. “It hurt, and it was all you, and I was…. I was out of control for the first time in my life. I didn’t know what was going on. I still don’t! Except, for the first time since I met you, it no longer hurts!”
Marduk stilled, his chest heaving.
Because he was no longer that foolish young prince, and they’d spent so many years fighting that he was well and truly tired of it.
Damn it.Marduk cupped his palms behind his head, trying to think. “When precisely did it fall quiet?”
Her mouth took on that mulish slant he knew too well.
Despite himself, he smiled. “So I was that good, huh?”
He was ready for the punch that came his way and caught her fist in his. Hauling her into his arms, he dragged her toward the nearest window ledge and sat, pulling her into his lap. “Relax. I was joking.”
“It is not a laughing matter.”
She sat so primly, but at least she was allowing him this. Marduk brushed the backs of his fingers up and down her spine. In the wake of last night, when he’d spent hours pleasing her, he’d have expected to have had his fill, but he couldn’t stop touching her.
“Sex is primal,” he said with a shrug. “So is thedreki. Maybe it’s had its fill of whatever it needed?”
“I’ve had sex before.”
